SALON

Tuesday, Oct 9, 2012 3:21 PM UTC

Goldman Sachs can’t take a joke

How Obama's mean standup comedy routine hurt the feelings of Wall Street's premier investment bank

By

Topics: Hank Paulson, Dodd-Frank, 2012 Elections, Bank Reform, Goldman Sachs, Business, Barack Obama, Robert Rubin, ,

Goldman Sachs can't take a jokeLloyd Blankfein (Credit: Reuters/Jason Reed)

Money can’t buy you a thick skin. That’s the takeaway from a Wall Street Journal article published today that reports how Goldman Sachs turned against Obama.

The last straw for many came two weeks later. At the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, the president drew laughs at their expense. “All of the jokes here tonight are brought to you by our friends at Goldman Sachs,” Mr. Obama said, referring to the SEC allegations. “So you don’t have to worry — they make money whether you laugh or not.”

Goldman Sachs ought to have been pleased at Obama’s crack — it’s more of an advertisement for their services than an insult. The mystique, and profitability, of Goldman Sachs is built on the company’s ability to make money in any market. Goldman was the first big investment bank on Wall Street to figure out which way the subprime wind was blowing, and it got out of its most dangerous positions (often by dumping toxic waste on its own clients) well before its competitors. Getting called out by name by the president should be taken as a sign of respect!

But Goldman’s pique at the White House was not limited to merely a bad sense of humor. The Wall Street Journal also reports that Goldman was angry that it wasn’t more involved with cleaning up the mess that Wall Street created.

Resentments against the White House began, said senior Goldman executives, because the firm thought it would be consulted when the Obama administration began crafting regulations in response to the financial crisis. They weren’t. Instead, they were surprised by a measure dubbed the Volcker rule, which would damage one of Goldman’s lucrative businesses.

“They weren’t” may be one of the funniest (if unintentionally so) lines the Journal has ever printed. One former Goldman Sachs CEO, Robert Rubin, was instrumental in pushing through laws that exempted Wall Street from the kind of regulatory oversight that might have helped prevent the crash. Another, Hank Paulson, led a lobbying effort in 2004 that resulted in a rule change that allowed Goldman and its colleagues the freedom to make bigger bets on derivative trades than ever before. Goldman’s advice has been definitively proven to be disastrous for the country. Since when do we consult bank robbers on how to write laws against theft?

Never mind the jokes — Goldman has done just fine under Obama. But it wants to do better, and that’s what the stream of campaign contributions headed Romney’s way is all about. Goldman Sachs will make more money under a president who will pass no law without making sure it passes Wall Street’s smell test.

Andrew Leonard

Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More Andrew Leonard.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 9 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
291 points292 points | 63 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
261 points262 points | 10 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
199 points200 points | 1 comment
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
53 points54 points | 8 comments
vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
47 points48 points | 3 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations